Getting New Members for New Site

Hi,

I am opening up a can of worms here.

How does one get members to join - free or paid if your site is brand new and you have managed to get ten of your best buddies join.

Your stats read.....

Total members = 10

Total Posts = say 12

Toatal Photos = 15

Worse  - if it is 1 for all counters.

Now who in there right mind is going join the site - even for free.....nobody.......yes nobody.

So how the heck do you entice someone to join - you cannot pay everyone to join (Not Rockafella) , you cannot bribe....

You could offer worthwhile content - ( I am not a writer?) can't afford bought articles...

It is the same with forums, classifieds, any member site...

So how do you start - when there is this wonder tool called Dolphin??

Glenn

You sort of need a niche - something that sets your site apart from the millions (?) of others out there.

As for the stats - that is the first thing that should go off your index page - if you don't have a lot of users.

Same with things like chat, IM, and in many cases, the forum.  Until you reach some "critical mass" to support these functions - they only make your site look worse.

Also, consider going to a single step join form with only a couple questions, like email, password, gender, age.... and get that inserted into the database... then auto log them in - and have them upload photos or fill out the rest of their join form later - after you have already gathered this important initial information.  Put this single step join form ON your index page in a block - so they can do it all right there.

Don't even ask them for a username, use their profiles ID as their nickname  - let them change/choose one later if they want.  Set your Profiles.ID auto increment value to something higher, like 221192 or something, don't start at 1.

In a nutshell - take stats off your site - put the join (the whole thing!) in the index page in a block, only ask a few questions - and get the signup.  Dont use chat or IM or anything else that gives an "empty look" to your site.  Consider also re-working your search too - to reduce the empty look.

Smoge